GWOT II - Taking A Swing
Dec. 10th, 2023 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT II - Taking A Swing
"A lot of regulations are written in blood." USCG Captain Kyle McAvoy (retired), marine incident investigator
Title 8 ยง 5157, California Code of Regulations. Permit-Required Confined Spaces.
"Entry means the action by which a person passes through an opening into a permit-required confined space. Entry includes ensuing work activities in that space and is considered to have occurred as soon as any part of the entrant's body breaks the plane of an opening into the space."
Much later in my life, someone who was in a position to care asked me, "So, what was your worst day at Site?"
It wasn't the raging gun battles.
It wasn't the various IEDs and other badness.
It wasn't even the intramural fights, stupid and useless, that cost us lives and gained us nothing but the privilege of living to the next day.
It was the technical rescue.
###
I was attending a Facilities meeting. Having competent supervisors, I dared to turn my radio off.
This was a mistake. Because my phone pinged.
Everyone stopped and looked at me, and I slunk out to look at my message.
I'd barely been allowed to start attending Facilities meetings at all, and they were critical in that Facilities touched every aspect of the Security department. The Facilities VP had started out by having no respect for me and my profession, rather suddenly hated me with a passion, and had slowly over months and years allowed his fury to simmer to a more casual dislike.
I read it.
I forgot Facilities and interdepartmental politics, walked back into the meeting and interrupted.
"We have a confined space emergency in F tower between 3 and 4," I said and ran right back out again.
I turned on my radio just in time to hear the second repeat of the Fire Brigade page.
"... will respond with full equipment to F as in Foxtrot Tower for a person trapped ..."
The stretcher bearers would get their gear from within their department areas. That was their big advantage in response time, that they had their gear virtually next to them because they couldn't hurt anyone with it, and might help.
Our Fire Brigade was our slowest resource. Captain Janine - I was lobbying for her to be promoted to Chief, but her utter lack of tact was hindering my efforts - insisted that her firefighters always report to station, and ONLY THEN report with equipment to the scene of the emergency. I understood the logic. Control, accountability, making sure they had the right equipment for the call. But it meant they were slower, because they sometimes had to go right past the emergency to get their gear, without which they were useless, and double back. But they could not keep their gear with them for the reason that it would then be scattered to hell and gone when we had so very little of it to begin with.
My run slowed to an involuntary jog. I wanted to run but I dared not be out of breath when I got there.
"There" was F3 exterior hallway. The tower was a hollow core with wings of offices sticking out on all sides. Imagine an asterisk made of corridors with offices on either side, with two of the spindles connecting to E and H respectively.
The core contained an elevator shaft, two stairwells on opposite sides of the shaft, an elevator equipment room, a few offices, a kitchenette, a vending machine area converted to an employee lending library, two restrooms and a janitor's closet. And a door, propped, open, with a waist high railing just behind and a crowd of Employees clustering around hearing someone shout. The shouts were faint and tinny.
Someone small. A child. Goddamn it.
"Manager, control that motherfucking door!" I shouted at the crowd and demonstrated a skill I don't like to use.
Our stairs are a half spiral. If you know the stairs and have confidence in your physical abilities, you can vault the railing and slide down the inner guardrail.
If you biff you fall to the bottom, in this case three stories.
I didn't biff. I set what was probably a new speed record for a floor change and used my Grand Master Key to open the corresponding HVAC air shaft access door, which looked like any other office door except for the MAINTENANCE ONLY KEEP OUT on the office plate, ran to the railing and looked up.
No joy. The child's crying was below me.
I could see a foot. A white sneakered small foot. In between the hot water intake (heavily insulated) and the cold water return (not insulated at all).
I keyed up radio.
"Fire Ops, Echo 18, immediate need. We have one child victim trapped between Foxtrot 1 and Foxtrot 2 in the HVAC air shaft chase, at least a sixteen foot fall, head down trapped between two water pipes. Technical rope rescue forthwith."
I had no equipment. I was not even wearing a rigger belt. My handgun belt was high retention and would demonstratably support several hundred pounds of weight, but it was not a rescue harness and I had no business trusting a life to it. Let alone two. But there was no easy way to clip anything _to_ that belt.
The crying was getting weaker. Not because the child was calming down. Because the child was injured.
A couple Employees were watching me curiously.
I walked into one's office, picked up his laptop gently, set it to the side, swept off all the rest of the crap on his desk in one motion, away from the laptop, and dragged his heavy desk out in to the hallway and across the door.
I started to key into the fire hose cabinet. The key did not open on the first attempt, so I dropped my keys (my retainer would retract them), drew my baton, shattered the window, and opened it that way.
I detached the fire hose from the standpipe and yanked it off its mount and over my shoulder.
The Employees were still watching, obviously wondering if I had gone mad.
I looped the fire hose over the top and under the bottom of the desk. Screwed the fire hose to itself. Gravity would hold the desk against the door frame.
I now had a rope, of sorts. This was not an approved use of a fire hose by any means under any conditions. I really should knot it, not screw the connector together and then fail to tighten the connection with spanners. This hose wouldn't even hold water, and now I was going to use it to hold my weight.
I climbed over the railing with the hose in my hand. Lowered the loop down into the half-gloom.
I lowered myself hand over hand.
This would be a good time to have a free hand for a flashlight. No such luck.
I could see the foot.
If I did nothing else with my life, I was going to go get that foot.
I ran out of fire hose rope with my legs against the side of the shaft, the 1st floor landing several feet below me, and almost level with the child's upside down foot.
I didn't have a free hand.
So I climbed up, stuck a foot into the loop - it held - and used a hand to steady me against the wall. This freed up my right hand for my pocket light.
I lit up the foot.
It was a shoe.
There was no foot in it.
Goddamn it.
"Fire Ops, Echo 18, correction last, child is in F air shaft, I am trapped between 1 and 2, child has fallen further down and has not repeat not been located."
The door below me opened and two Site firefighters looked in, then down.
"Hey," I said, and they jumped a little and looked up.
The hot water pipe was a four inch pipe covered in three inch thick insulation. Probably asbestos.
The cold water pipe was a two inch pipe.
The gap between them was perhaps twelve inches, perhaps ten perhaps fourteen. Enough for a toddler to slide between.
Not enough for me. And I did not think either would support my weight.
But what I could do is swing a little bit left and right, checking the other fittings for signs of damage, blood or a body.
No joy. So I lowered myself further, allowing myself to dangle by one hand from the loop.
This put my foot almost - almost - on the 1st floor landing railing.
The two firefighters caught me and helped me down to the landing.
All three of us used our lights.
We saw nothing.
Basement level was a maze of confined space piping between buildings. A few access doors to what the old timers called the steam tunnels and the rest of us avoided.
I reluctantly excused myself to 1, down the half-stairwell to B, keyed in, walked across the connecting path to the other stairwell - intended only as a fire emergency exit connector between the two stairwells - and halfway along, got to the waist height 3 foot by 3 foot metal wall hatch.
My small Facilities key opened it.
A little innocuous metal wall plate.
"CONFINED SPACE. A Site CONFINED SPACE PERMIT IS REQUIRED TO ENTER THIS SPACE. FAILURE TO COMPLY IS A TERMINATION OFFENSE."
The wording dated from before the Firecracker but was just as true now as it had been then.
The difference being, that if I managed to get myself stuck or asphyxiated or poisoned or whatever, the San Jose Fire Department would NOT be responding. I would not be rescued. My body might not even be recovered.
I did not want this child's rescue to become a recovery.
But the fastest way for me to kill this child would be for me to enter without doing the process.
The long, annoying, frustrating, complex bureaucratic process.
Sticking my head in and shining my light around is not entering the space, I reasoned.
So I did.
And saw a leg, without a shoe, about thirty feet down the pipe chase.
The pipes down here were not WATER HOT and WATER COLD.
They were WASTE SEPTIC and WASTE HAZ LOW and WASTE HAZ HIGH and H2 and H2S and CO2 and O2 ...
This was the _hazmat_ pipe chase.
Suddenly a firefighter was pushing me out of the way and I was grabbing him by the scruff of his neck.
"STOP!" I ordered.
"I see the child too. We CANNOT go in there. Go get your SCBA and tell your company officer!"
He shook his head, took a breath, visibly regained control over himself, actually saw me for the first time, flinched when he recognized me.
Then took my orders and did as told.
I keyed up my radio and of course it did not work.
Basement. Concrete and metal doesn't like radio waves. People weren't supposed to be down there so the Site radio repeater didn't have an antenna down there. No antenna, no repeat.
I was not going to leave until a responsible person relieved me. But I had a ton of things I needed to be doing, and neither sticking my head through the hatch like a doofus nor being stupid and crawling through it was getting any of those things done.
Two firefighters. One had SCBA. Oh thank God.
The other had a TIC. Thermal imaging camera. By that, the radio, the scowl and the different colored helmet, I could recognize that they were a company officer.
"I am Echo 18," I said clearly and loudly. "By my authority I am issuing a confined space permit, verbally, for entry into this space. There is a child down about thirty feet to the left in the hazmat chase. We need an air monitor, a entry line and two additional lights. I need two more rescuers, three runners and a Stokes basket."
A slight pause.
"NOW. Air monitor, entry line, two lights, two more rescuers, three runners, a Stokes. GO!"
Both firefighters immediately went back the way they came.
The next ninety seconds of my life were the longest of my life. And I've had a bad life.
The child's cries got weaker with every passing moment.
Janine was in the lead holding a portable air monitor. She was wearing a SCBA but had not put on the mask.
Three firefighters were behind her. One was holding a coil of rope. Another had a large two handed portable light. I had a flashlight. All the firefighters had lights on their gear. Another had their SCBA.
We were in business.
"Janine, authorized time of entry 1335," and I wrote 1335 and a slash on the wall with a Sharpie, directly on the concrete.
She nodded crisply, clipped the gas monitor to her harness, put on her mask and SCBA, and crawled through the hatch. The second firefighter followed her, also wearing his mask and SCBA, with the rope tied around his waist.
I did not have an SCBA. I shouldn't need one.
A runner came up. Security, one of mine.
"Echo 18, message, Security Control."
The runner took out his pen and notepad.
"Confined space entry made 1335 hours by firefighters Janine and Tom. Resource needs. Stokes litter. Oxygen. Stretcher bearers to stage on 1. Secure access points on 3, 2 and 1 and both basement stairwells. Establish personnel accountability and souls count. Runner to replace you. Three runners, top, bottom, in middle. Go!"
He wrote it down word for word, not understanding most of it, but he would repeat it correctly into the Site telephone at the other end of the loop I was trying to establish. Then he ran.
Voices echoed back down the narrow chase.
"Unconscious and breathing!" Janine shouted.
The next runner was carrying a Security medical bag.
"Go back, keep the chain going," I commanded as I tore open the bag and checked for the two items I wanted.
Both present.
I gave a yank on the rope. Stop.
I then used the middle of the rope, not the end, to tie a loop around the handle of the medic bag. Eased the medic bag into the chaseway.
This would all be so much easier if we had radios.
We would just have to use telepathy instead.
I could not walk up and tell them, they could not go back and ask what. Even at such a short distance, the radios would not work. Pipes don't just carry fluids and gases. They conduct electromagnetic energy.
I yanked twice on the rope. Go.
The rescue team hauled on the rope and the medic bag went sliding up towards them.
A single yank when it stopped moving.
A long moment.
Then two yanks.
So I took up the slack until a single yank told me to stop.
Two more firefighters now.
I gave a brief passdown. To my horror, it was already 1350. Fifteen minutes had slipped by.
A double yank.
A hard pull. Not a yank back, which would mean stop, but resistance.
So we maintained a steady pull.
This was not a cliff rescue or an over the side rescue. Then we would have to set up a rope system, with main and safety and belay and haul and all the clicky-clacky metal gear beloved of rock climbers and a certain breed of sadomasochists for whom handcuffs were too simple and safe.
The medic bag had contained a folded piece of stitched heavy cloth with handles. An emergency stretcher for picking someone up out of that awkward spot between bed and wall, or toilet and wall, or collapsed in the shower.
Janine and Tom had put the child in it and tied the end of the rope to the handles. Then followed it out.
We lifted the child out. The other item, the oxygen, had been attached to her face and the cylinder nestled between her lower legs. The standby firefighters, until now had been doing nothing, rushed the child in their arms to the stairwell, to the stretcher bearers, to what little help our infirmary could be.
Janine started to lift herself over the hatch coaming. Stopped.
I grabbed her wrist. Hard.
"Runner! More firefighters with SCBA! Now!" I shouted.
Then I used firefighter profanity.
"RIC! RIC! RIC!"
She started to break my grip, but I cheated and grabbed her SCBA cylinder rescue handle with my other hand.
"NO! NOT WITHOUT A ROPE!"
Tom had not, in fact, followed her out.
I was not calling for help from a person.
RIC means Rapid Intervention Crew.
It's what you need when firefighters need to call 9-1-1 and they can't becuase they _is_ 9-1-1.
Most RIC evolutions are not successful.
Janine panted in my grip. I checked her air.
Something on her was flashing and buzzing.
It wasn't her SCBA air monitor.
It was the hazardous gas sensor.
"OUT! OUT!" I shouted.
I grabbed her and started hauling her through the hatch.
She stopped fighting me, then she helped climb through.
We clambered down the corridor and up the stairwell.
Janine collapsed halfway up.
I then did one of the harder things I have ever done in my life.
I ignored the fact. I kept going up to the 1st level doorway.
Gasping on my hands and knees.
A mixed crowd of Employees and firefighters and stretcher bearers.
Most watching the CPR being done on the child.
The AED saying "Pause, analyzing, do not touch patient."
I got a breath and used it.
"Mayday mayday mayday. Firefighter Janine, down on the stairs. Firefighter Tom, down in the chaise."
A horrified frozen pause from the firefighters. Puzzled looks from the crowd.
"Go On Air! Go get Janine! Only!"
A couple more pauses for breath. I could not catch my breath.
I could barely think.
Two firefighters masked up, went down, dragged her up by her arms, dragged her right out of the lobby, out of the propped double doors and to the grass, started stripping off all her gear.
I did not follow.
"Clear this area," I gasped. "Hazardous air. Everyone outside now."
I repeated "Everyone" and people stared at me. "Every." "One." "Every every one one." "Every every." "One one every."
The next thing I knew, I was out on the grass under the clear blue sky with a transparent mask over my face and someone was taking my blood pressure.
Security personnel were holding a perimeter outside the building.
Stretcher bearers were setting up mass casualty reception.
A forlorn little body was covered by a yellow highway blanket.
Janine was sitting up, took her own medical oxygen mask off, shouted "PAR CHECK!" and put her oxygen mask back on.
The VP of Facilities was holding a clipboard on which he was writing.
There were four people wearing SCBA bottles. He looked carefully at the gauges of each and wrote down a number.
"Entry authorized 1405 hours," he said.
They went inside.
Ten minutes later, they came out with a body.
Again, CPR was started in the lobby.
Again, it was not successful.
Meanwhile F building was evacuated and the emergency doors to E and G were closed.
The leak was heavier than air but no one was taking any chances.
Two additional teams made entry. One to the roof, to manually open the vents and spin up the exhaust system designed to push fresh air into the chaise for such ane vent. One to shut valves on both sides of the leak.
My head was clear enough to sit up, I thought, but the piercing headache proved me wrong.
Arturo was talking to the VP of Facilities.
He was processing the scene.
The crime scene.
When people are dead, it's a crime scene.
###
We knew a lot more now. I was not involved in the investigation or the scene management. I was an involved party. It might be stretching a point to say I was a suspect.
Face it.
I was a suspect.
Before the Firecracker, this would have been a cluster fuck of the first order and what I should have done - with absolutely no possible doubt - is chased everyone away from the accesses on 3, 2, 1 and B. Waited for the Fire Brigade (if there had been one, which there was not) and Facilities (which had not had a year of practice in being on their own plus radioactive and terrorist horrors) to in turn wait for the San Jose Fire Department's first response, which in turn would wait for their Hazardous Materials team to drive down from North San Jose... in a word.
Wait.
As a child died.
If I had done that. If I had had the moral courage to do that. To tell everyone, sorry, the little girl is dead, and we're not going to let anyone join her. She might have a fragile sliver of hope, and I'm going to stamp on it with Security's heavy boots and shatter it because we need to wait for the experts and we're afraid of the lawyers.
This is post-Firecracker. There are no lawyers and no courts. There is a San Jose Fire Department but they only fight fires, and we were too far from their core to even do that here. Their hazmat people certainly would not be coming; they were too busy with the leftovers of San Francisco, between one thing and another and now terrorism too.
So we did what we always did. We tried to wing it with a shoestring and a prayer.
The VP of Facilities had done my post incident debrief personally.
Key excerpts.
"You are trained formally as a Confined Space Attendant. When were you trained in Confined Space Awareness? By who? Have you been trained on the confined space protocols of this site?"
"Are you a Confined Space Technician?"
"How much time have you spent working in hazardous gas environments?"
"Are you a Hazardous Materials Technician? Are you formally trained to the Hazardous Materials Operations Level? By who and when?"
"How many hours have you worn SCBA?"
"How many incidents have you worn SCBA in an IDLH?"
"How many confined space entries have you attended? How many of those confined space entries were initiated as rescues? How many of those confined space entries were suspended or terminated early? Did any of those confined space entries, which started as routine, became a rescue while you were an attendant?"
"How many different air gas monitoring systems have you been trained to use?"
"Do you realize that when you opened the hatch and entered the space with your head, you completed an unauthorized entry in violation of the permit required confined space program?"
"Did you know there is no such thing as a verbal entry permit?"
It was the verbal equivalent of a precision beatdown.
I absolutely, positively deserved every word of it.
He turned off the recorder.
"Janine and Tom were fully qualified to make entry into a confined space for rescue, IF and ONLY IF I had personally issued them a Confined Space Permit. They knew it. They decided not to wait. They had every right to ignore anything you said, instead of taking a less qualified person's word as permission, and either authorize their own entry under exigent conditions or refuse to enter for their own safety."
A pause.
"I have interviewed Janine. Her version of events is that she designated you as the confined space attendant, which she knew you were qualified to do, and made emergency entry under exigent circumstances because the victim was in her sight. My report will reflect her version, not yours."
He looked me over carefully.
"Do you understand that that child was dead the moment someone left that 3rd floor door unlocked and the child wandered through it, climbed the railing and fell?"
I shook my head.
"My job, sir, is to wonder if she climbed the railing or was lifted over it. Whoever left that door unlocked committed involuntary manslaughter, twice. If someone did put her over that railing, the crime is murder. Twice. Her, and also Tom."
"This Site has never, ever been a place where children were intended to be. I have taken my own children to tour this Site. But I would not have them live here with me for the same reason I would not let them play on the side of a freeway. Accidents. Can. Happen."
I knew for a fact his own children were dead. I had in fact checked their dead pulses despite rigor, hoping against hope.
Our eyes met.
"I blamed you wrongly for the death of my wife and children. I will not blame you for the death of this girl or for Tom's death. I blame him, he should have known better. I don't blame Janine, she does not know the Site, she did not help build it. Tom did.
"This place will fucking kill you if you do not respect it. That climbing over the rail with a fire hose was the stupidest damn fool stunt I have ever heard of. But I can't cripple you by taking away your freedom to act to protect us from threats we are not trained for. I am not a bomb disposal technician. I have never run a security force. I have never been on a threat assessment committee and the first active shooter training I participated in was the one you taught.
"We have identified a lot of safety issues from this tragedy, and we will address every single one of them, and anything else you or I can think up. But I am going to fix one of the biggest ones right now.
"You, personally, are required to stage for any incident involving fire or hazardous materials or confined spaces, unless there is an act of violence involved. Even and especially then, you will respect the hazards. You don't have time to train as a firefighter or hazmat tech or confined space tech. So I am revoking any past training certifications with respect to all three, insofar as this Site is concerned.
"What you are authorized to do instead, if you decide it is necessary, is send undertrained or even unqualified Fire Brigade or Security contractors to die in your place."
Fuck me what.
"The SLE and I had this conversation at length before this interview began. He stated in no uncertain terms that we were all dead without you, that you had saved us all several times in ways that I did not need to know or even would want to think about, and that if he had been forced to choose between you dead in that hallway and _me_ dead in that hallway, he would have chosen to save _you_ - because he knows I have trained backups and he knows that despite all efforts, _YOU_ sir do NOT!
"So my challenge to you is this. Don't tell me, I don't need to know. But what would have happened to all of us, to the Site, if they had dragged out your dead body instead of Tom?"
Long pause.
That ... did not bear thinking about.
Not just one dead child. All of them.
Not just one dead firefighter. The entire Fire Brigade, sidewalked or interned as a suspected terrorist organization.
The Reaction Team. The stretcher bearers even. Criminal conspirators in unauthorized militias.
Plus what some wag had called the Homeland Friends and Family Plan.
I realized with a chill.
I'd had no right.
Not to authorize the entry, that was a minor fuckup. Besides they'd have gone anyway.
Risking myself, my own happy ass, that was what I had no right at all to do.
The moment I realized the child was in the hazmat chase I should have gone right back upstairs and let the Fire Brigade do the heroing. And if need be, the dying. Even if Janine as well as Tom had been killed as a result.
I wasn't _allowed_ to get killed.
"I see that you get it. Good. We will talk again, every morning, for a while, while we patch all this up. Meanwhile, go do your job. Find out if this was an accident or a murder."
I got up and walked out, started the process to do exactly that.
###
It had been negligent.
The door had been left locked but unlatched by a HVAC tech changing air filters. He felt really bad about it. This did not bring the child back. Or Tom.
All accesses to Site confined spaces now have an additional surface mounted padlock. A Facilities key _and_ a Security key are now required. This also fixed the latch issue. Changing filters is slightly less convenient but no one cares about that.
Child tracking procedures were revised. Her mother is seeing Dr. Rise to try to handle her grief and guilt.
The railing areas are now caged, in lieu of a second door. Belt and suspenders.
The hazmat needs of the Site were reevaluated, and two of the more hazardous lines taken out of service in certain buildings. The changes would not have saved Tom but were worth doing in their own right.
All Fire Brigade and Facilities staff were retrained in SCBA and IDLH procedures, by Janine, personally.
All Fire Brigade, Facilities staff and Security supervisors were trained in confined space procedures, by the VP of Facilities, personally. Except me. I sat through all the trainings and completed all the requirements, but was not issued a certification. My certificate of completion was stamped "Knowledge Skills Abilities Verified, Attendee Not Authorized To Enter Or Attend Confined Spaces At Site."
Tom was buried with honor near the top of Boot Hill.
The Fire Brigade had a private wake to grieve him. I was the only non firefighter to be invited to attend. Janine put an arm around my shoulder and made me stay for the whole time.
The Site tried to buy a lot more emergency equipment but couldn't because of the War. Gas sensors were backlogged because of the priority for chemical weapons sensors for our use of nerve gas in China.
I redoubled my efforts to train my backups. Arturo was most promising of a bad lot, but Sharon was catching up fast to him from a lower starting point.
I have been told by a sober Dr. Rise and a drunken Janine, that my efforts that day saved at least one life and possibly several. I'd bought that child the best possible chance of survival, the same chance Tom had knowingly risked his life for - and given it.
It will never feel that way to me.
If I'd had the balls, to lock it all down.
Instead I'd taken a swing at it.
"A lot of regulations are written in blood." USCG Captain Kyle McAvoy (retired), marine incident investigator
Title 8 ยง 5157, California Code of Regulations. Permit-Required Confined Spaces.
"Entry means the action by which a person passes through an opening into a permit-required confined space. Entry includes ensuing work activities in that space and is considered to have occurred as soon as any part of the entrant's body breaks the plane of an opening into the space."
Much later in my life, someone who was in a position to care asked me, "So, what was your worst day at Site?"
It wasn't the raging gun battles.
It wasn't the various IEDs and other badness.
It wasn't even the intramural fights, stupid and useless, that cost us lives and gained us nothing but the privilege of living to the next day.
It was the technical rescue.
###
I was attending a Facilities meeting. Having competent supervisors, I dared to turn my radio off.
This was a mistake. Because my phone pinged.
Everyone stopped and looked at me, and I slunk out to look at my message.
I'd barely been allowed to start attending Facilities meetings at all, and they were critical in that Facilities touched every aspect of the Security department. The Facilities VP had started out by having no respect for me and my profession, rather suddenly hated me with a passion, and had slowly over months and years allowed his fury to simmer to a more casual dislike.
I read it.
I forgot Facilities and interdepartmental politics, walked back into the meeting and interrupted.
"We have a confined space emergency in F tower between 3 and 4," I said and ran right back out again.
I turned on my radio just in time to hear the second repeat of the Fire Brigade page.
"... will respond with full equipment to F as in Foxtrot Tower for a person trapped ..."
The stretcher bearers would get their gear from within their department areas. That was their big advantage in response time, that they had their gear virtually next to them because they couldn't hurt anyone with it, and might help.
Our Fire Brigade was our slowest resource. Captain Janine - I was lobbying for her to be promoted to Chief, but her utter lack of tact was hindering my efforts - insisted that her firefighters always report to station, and ONLY THEN report with equipment to the scene of the emergency. I understood the logic. Control, accountability, making sure they had the right equipment for the call. But it meant they were slower, because they sometimes had to go right past the emergency to get their gear, without which they were useless, and double back. But they could not keep their gear with them for the reason that it would then be scattered to hell and gone when we had so very little of it to begin with.
My run slowed to an involuntary jog. I wanted to run but I dared not be out of breath when I got there.
"There" was F3 exterior hallway. The tower was a hollow core with wings of offices sticking out on all sides. Imagine an asterisk made of corridors with offices on either side, with two of the spindles connecting to E and H respectively.
The core contained an elevator shaft, two stairwells on opposite sides of the shaft, an elevator equipment room, a few offices, a kitchenette, a vending machine area converted to an employee lending library, two restrooms and a janitor's closet. And a door, propped, open, with a waist high railing just behind and a crowd of Employees clustering around hearing someone shout. The shouts were faint and tinny.
Someone small. A child. Goddamn it.
"Manager, control that motherfucking door!" I shouted at the crowd and demonstrated a skill I don't like to use.
Our stairs are a half spiral. If you know the stairs and have confidence in your physical abilities, you can vault the railing and slide down the inner guardrail.
If you biff you fall to the bottom, in this case three stories.
I didn't biff. I set what was probably a new speed record for a floor change and used my Grand Master Key to open the corresponding HVAC air shaft access door, which looked like any other office door except for the MAINTENANCE ONLY KEEP OUT on the office plate, ran to the railing and looked up.
No joy. The child's crying was below me.
I could see a foot. A white sneakered small foot. In between the hot water intake (heavily insulated) and the cold water return (not insulated at all).
I keyed up radio.
"Fire Ops, Echo 18, immediate need. We have one child victim trapped between Foxtrot 1 and Foxtrot 2 in the HVAC air shaft chase, at least a sixteen foot fall, head down trapped between two water pipes. Technical rope rescue forthwith."
I had no equipment. I was not even wearing a rigger belt. My handgun belt was high retention and would demonstratably support several hundred pounds of weight, but it was not a rescue harness and I had no business trusting a life to it. Let alone two. But there was no easy way to clip anything _to_ that belt.
The crying was getting weaker. Not because the child was calming down. Because the child was injured.
A couple Employees were watching me curiously.
I walked into one's office, picked up his laptop gently, set it to the side, swept off all the rest of the crap on his desk in one motion, away from the laptop, and dragged his heavy desk out in to the hallway and across the door.
I started to key into the fire hose cabinet. The key did not open on the first attempt, so I dropped my keys (my retainer would retract them), drew my baton, shattered the window, and opened it that way.
I detached the fire hose from the standpipe and yanked it off its mount and over my shoulder.
The Employees were still watching, obviously wondering if I had gone mad.
I looped the fire hose over the top and under the bottom of the desk. Screwed the fire hose to itself. Gravity would hold the desk against the door frame.
I now had a rope, of sorts. This was not an approved use of a fire hose by any means under any conditions. I really should knot it, not screw the connector together and then fail to tighten the connection with spanners. This hose wouldn't even hold water, and now I was going to use it to hold my weight.
I climbed over the railing with the hose in my hand. Lowered the loop down into the half-gloom.
I lowered myself hand over hand.
This would be a good time to have a free hand for a flashlight. No such luck.
I could see the foot.
If I did nothing else with my life, I was going to go get that foot.
I ran out of fire hose rope with my legs against the side of the shaft, the 1st floor landing several feet below me, and almost level with the child's upside down foot.
I didn't have a free hand.
So I climbed up, stuck a foot into the loop - it held - and used a hand to steady me against the wall. This freed up my right hand for my pocket light.
I lit up the foot.
It was a shoe.
There was no foot in it.
Goddamn it.
"Fire Ops, Echo 18, correction last, child is in F air shaft, I am trapped between 1 and 2, child has fallen further down and has not repeat not been located."
The door below me opened and two Site firefighters looked in, then down.
"Hey," I said, and they jumped a little and looked up.
The hot water pipe was a four inch pipe covered in three inch thick insulation. Probably asbestos.
The cold water pipe was a two inch pipe.
The gap between them was perhaps twelve inches, perhaps ten perhaps fourteen. Enough for a toddler to slide between.
Not enough for me. And I did not think either would support my weight.
But what I could do is swing a little bit left and right, checking the other fittings for signs of damage, blood or a body.
No joy. So I lowered myself further, allowing myself to dangle by one hand from the loop.
This put my foot almost - almost - on the 1st floor landing railing.
The two firefighters caught me and helped me down to the landing.
All three of us used our lights.
We saw nothing.
Basement level was a maze of confined space piping between buildings. A few access doors to what the old timers called the steam tunnels and the rest of us avoided.
I reluctantly excused myself to 1, down the half-stairwell to B, keyed in, walked across the connecting path to the other stairwell - intended only as a fire emergency exit connector between the two stairwells - and halfway along, got to the waist height 3 foot by 3 foot metal wall hatch.
My small Facilities key opened it.
A little innocuous metal wall plate.
"CONFINED SPACE. A Site CONFINED SPACE PERMIT IS REQUIRED TO ENTER THIS SPACE. FAILURE TO COMPLY IS A TERMINATION OFFENSE."
The wording dated from before the Firecracker but was just as true now as it had been then.
The difference being, that if I managed to get myself stuck or asphyxiated or poisoned or whatever, the San Jose Fire Department would NOT be responding. I would not be rescued. My body might not even be recovered.
I did not want this child's rescue to become a recovery.
But the fastest way for me to kill this child would be for me to enter without doing the process.
The long, annoying, frustrating, complex bureaucratic process.
Sticking my head in and shining my light around is not entering the space, I reasoned.
So I did.
And saw a leg, without a shoe, about thirty feet down the pipe chase.
The pipes down here were not WATER HOT and WATER COLD.
They were WASTE SEPTIC and WASTE HAZ LOW and WASTE HAZ HIGH and H2 and H2S and CO2 and O2 ...
This was the _hazmat_ pipe chase.
Suddenly a firefighter was pushing me out of the way and I was grabbing him by the scruff of his neck.
"STOP!" I ordered.
"I see the child too. We CANNOT go in there. Go get your SCBA and tell your company officer!"
He shook his head, took a breath, visibly regained control over himself, actually saw me for the first time, flinched when he recognized me.
Then took my orders and did as told.
I keyed up my radio and of course it did not work.
Basement. Concrete and metal doesn't like radio waves. People weren't supposed to be down there so the Site radio repeater didn't have an antenna down there. No antenna, no repeat.
I was not going to leave until a responsible person relieved me. But I had a ton of things I needed to be doing, and neither sticking my head through the hatch like a doofus nor being stupid and crawling through it was getting any of those things done.
Two firefighters. One had SCBA. Oh thank God.
The other had a TIC. Thermal imaging camera. By that, the radio, the scowl and the different colored helmet, I could recognize that they were a company officer.
"I am Echo 18," I said clearly and loudly. "By my authority I am issuing a confined space permit, verbally, for entry into this space. There is a child down about thirty feet to the left in the hazmat chase. We need an air monitor, a entry line and two additional lights. I need two more rescuers, three runners and a Stokes basket."
A slight pause.
"NOW. Air monitor, entry line, two lights, two more rescuers, three runners, a Stokes. GO!"
Both firefighters immediately went back the way they came.
The next ninety seconds of my life were the longest of my life. And I've had a bad life.
The child's cries got weaker with every passing moment.
Janine was in the lead holding a portable air monitor. She was wearing a SCBA but had not put on the mask.
Three firefighters were behind her. One was holding a coil of rope. Another had a large two handed portable light. I had a flashlight. All the firefighters had lights on their gear. Another had their SCBA.
We were in business.
"Janine, authorized time of entry 1335," and I wrote 1335 and a slash on the wall with a Sharpie, directly on the concrete.
She nodded crisply, clipped the gas monitor to her harness, put on her mask and SCBA, and crawled through the hatch. The second firefighter followed her, also wearing his mask and SCBA, with the rope tied around his waist.
I did not have an SCBA. I shouldn't need one.
A runner came up. Security, one of mine.
"Echo 18, message, Security Control."
The runner took out his pen and notepad.
"Confined space entry made 1335 hours by firefighters Janine and Tom. Resource needs. Stokes litter. Oxygen. Stretcher bearers to stage on 1. Secure access points on 3, 2 and 1 and both basement stairwells. Establish personnel accountability and souls count. Runner to replace you. Three runners, top, bottom, in middle. Go!"
He wrote it down word for word, not understanding most of it, but he would repeat it correctly into the Site telephone at the other end of the loop I was trying to establish. Then he ran.
Voices echoed back down the narrow chase.
"Unconscious and breathing!" Janine shouted.
The next runner was carrying a Security medical bag.
"Go back, keep the chain going," I commanded as I tore open the bag and checked for the two items I wanted.
Both present.
I gave a yank on the rope. Stop.
I then used the middle of the rope, not the end, to tie a loop around the handle of the medic bag. Eased the medic bag into the chaseway.
This would all be so much easier if we had radios.
We would just have to use telepathy instead.
I could not walk up and tell them, they could not go back and ask what. Even at such a short distance, the radios would not work. Pipes don't just carry fluids and gases. They conduct electromagnetic energy.
I yanked twice on the rope. Go.
The rescue team hauled on the rope and the medic bag went sliding up towards them.
A single yank when it stopped moving.
A long moment.
Then two yanks.
So I took up the slack until a single yank told me to stop.
Two more firefighters now.
I gave a brief passdown. To my horror, it was already 1350. Fifteen minutes had slipped by.
A double yank.
A hard pull. Not a yank back, which would mean stop, but resistance.
So we maintained a steady pull.
This was not a cliff rescue or an over the side rescue. Then we would have to set up a rope system, with main and safety and belay and haul and all the clicky-clacky metal gear beloved of rock climbers and a certain breed of sadomasochists for whom handcuffs were too simple and safe.
The medic bag had contained a folded piece of stitched heavy cloth with handles. An emergency stretcher for picking someone up out of that awkward spot between bed and wall, or toilet and wall, or collapsed in the shower.
Janine and Tom had put the child in it and tied the end of the rope to the handles. Then followed it out.
We lifted the child out. The other item, the oxygen, had been attached to her face and the cylinder nestled between her lower legs. The standby firefighters, until now had been doing nothing, rushed the child in their arms to the stairwell, to the stretcher bearers, to what little help our infirmary could be.
Janine started to lift herself over the hatch coaming. Stopped.
I grabbed her wrist. Hard.
"Runner! More firefighters with SCBA! Now!" I shouted.
Then I used firefighter profanity.
"RIC! RIC! RIC!"
She started to break my grip, but I cheated and grabbed her SCBA cylinder rescue handle with my other hand.
"NO! NOT WITHOUT A ROPE!"
Tom had not, in fact, followed her out.
I was not calling for help from a person.
RIC means Rapid Intervention Crew.
It's what you need when firefighters need to call 9-1-1 and they can't becuase they _is_ 9-1-1.
Most RIC evolutions are not successful.
Janine panted in my grip. I checked her air.
Something on her was flashing and buzzing.
It wasn't her SCBA air monitor.
It was the hazardous gas sensor.
"OUT! OUT!" I shouted.
I grabbed her and started hauling her through the hatch.
She stopped fighting me, then she helped climb through.
We clambered down the corridor and up the stairwell.
Janine collapsed halfway up.
I then did one of the harder things I have ever done in my life.
I ignored the fact. I kept going up to the 1st level doorway.
Gasping on my hands and knees.
A mixed crowd of Employees and firefighters and stretcher bearers.
Most watching the CPR being done on the child.
The AED saying "Pause, analyzing, do not touch patient."
I got a breath and used it.
"Mayday mayday mayday. Firefighter Janine, down on the stairs. Firefighter Tom, down in the chaise."
A horrified frozen pause from the firefighters. Puzzled looks from the crowd.
"Go On Air! Go get Janine! Only!"
A couple more pauses for breath. I could not catch my breath.
I could barely think.
Two firefighters masked up, went down, dragged her up by her arms, dragged her right out of the lobby, out of the propped double doors and to the grass, started stripping off all her gear.
I did not follow.
"Clear this area," I gasped. "Hazardous air. Everyone outside now."
I repeated "Everyone" and people stared at me. "Every." "One." "Every every one one." "Every every." "One one every."
The next thing I knew, I was out on the grass under the clear blue sky with a transparent mask over my face and someone was taking my blood pressure.
Security personnel were holding a perimeter outside the building.
Stretcher bearers were setting up mass casualty reception.
A forlorn little body was covered by a yellow highway blanket.
Janine was sitting up, took her own medical oxygen mask off, shouted "PAR CHECK!" and put her oxygen mask back on.
The VP of Facilities was holding a clipboard on which he was writing.
There were four people wearing SCBA bottles. He looked carefully at the gauges of each and wrote down a number.
"Entry authorized 1405 hours," he said.
They went inside.
Ten minutes later, they came out with a body.
Again, CPR was started in the lobby.
Again, it was not successful.
Meanwhile F building was evacuated and the emergency doors to E and G were closed.
The leak was heavier than air but no one was taking any chances.
Two additional teams made entry. One to the roof, to manually open the vents and spin up the exhaust system designed to push fresh air into the chaise for such ane vent. One to shut valves on both sides of the leak.
My head was clear enough to sit up, I thought, but the piercing headache proved me wrong.
Arturo was talking to the VP of Facilities.
He was processing the scene.
The crime scene.
When people are dead, it's a crime scene.
###
We knew a lot more now. I was not involved in the investigation or the scene management. I was an involved party. It might be stretching a point to say I was a suspect.
Face it.
I was a suspect.
Before the Firecracker, this would have been a cluster fuck of the first order and what I should have done - with absolutely no possible doubt - is chased everyone away from the accesses on 3, 2, 1 and B. Waited for the Fire Brigade (if there had been one, which there was not) and Facilities (which had not had a year of practice in being on their own plus radioactive and terrorist horrors) to in turn wait for the San Jose Fire Department's first response, which in turn would wait for their Hazardous Materials team to drive down from North San Jose... in a word.
Wait.
As a child died.
If I had done that. If I had had the moral courage to do that. To tell everyone, sorry, the little girl is dead, and we're not going to let anyone join her. She might have a fragile sliver of hope, and I'm going to stamp on it with Security's heavy boots and shatter it because we need to wait for the experts and we're afraid of the lawyers.
This is post-Firecracker. There are no lawyers and no courts. There is a San Jose Fire Department but they only fight fires, and we were too far from their core to even do that here. Their hazmat people certainly would not be coming; they were too busy with the leftovers of San Francisco, between one thing and another and now terrorism too.
So we did what we always did. We tried to wing it with a shoestring and a prayer.
The VP of Facilities had done my post incident debrief personally.
Key excerpts.
"You are trained formally as a Confined Space Attendant. When were you trained in Confined Space Awareness? By who? Have you been trained on the confined space protocols of this site?"
"Are you a Confined Space Technician?"
"How much time have you spent working in hazardous gas environments?"
"Are you a Hazardous Materials Technician? Are you formally trained to the Hazardous Materials Operations Level? By who and when?"
"How many hours have you worn SCBA?"
"How many incidents have you worn SCBA in an IDLH?"
"How many confined space entries have you attended? How many of those confined space entries were initiated as rescues? How many of those confined space entries were suspended or terminated early? Did any of those confined space entries, which started as routine, became a rescue while you were an attendant?"
"How many different air gas monitoring systems have you been trained to use?"
"Do you realize that when you opened the hatch and entered the space with your head, you completed an unauthorized entry in violation of the permit required confined space program?"
"Did you know there is no such thing as a verbal entry permit?"
It was the verbal equivalent of a precision beatdown.
I absolutely, positively deserved every word of it.
He turned off the recorder.
"Janine and Tom were fully qualified to make entry into a confined space for rescue, IF and ONLY IF I had personally issued them a Confined Space Permit. They knew it. They decided not to wait. They had every right to ignore anything you said, instead of taking a less qualified person's word as permission, and either authorize their own entry under exigent conditions or refuse to enter for their own safety."
A pause.
"I have interviewed Janine. Her version of events is that she designated you as the confined space attendant, which she knew you were qualified to do, and made emergency entry under exigent circumstances because the victim was in her sight. My report will reflect her version, not yours."
He looked me over carefully.
"Do you understand that that child was dead the moment someone left that 3rd floor door unlocked and the child wandered through it, climbed the railing and fell?"
I shook my head.
"My job, sir, is to wonder if she climbed the railing or was lifted over it. Whoever left that door unlocked committed involuntary manslaughter, twice. If someone did put her over that railing, the crime is murder. Twice. Her, and also Tom."
"This Site has never, ever been a place where children were intended to be. I have taken my own children to tour this Site. But I would not have them live here with me for the same reason I would not let them play on the side of a freeway. Accidents. Can. Happen."
I knew for a fact his own children were dead. I had in fact checked their dead pulses despite rigor, hoping against hope.
Our eyes met.
"I blamed you wrongly for the death of my wife and children. I will not blame you for the death of this girl or for Tom's death. I blame him, he should have known better. I don't blame Janine, she does not know the Site, she did not help build it. Tom did.
"This place will fucking kill you if you do not respect it. That climbing over the rail with a fire hose was the stupidest damn fool stunt I have ever heard of. But I can't cripple you by taking away your freedom to act to protect us from threats we are not trained for. I am not a bomb disposal technician. I have never run a security force. I have never been on a threat assessment committee and the first active shooter training I participated in was the one you taught.
"We have identified a lot of safety issues from this tragedy, and we will address every single one of them, and anything else you or I can think up. But I am going to fix one of the biggest ones right now.
"You, personally, are required to stage for any incident involving fire or hazardous materials or confined spaces, unless there is an act of violence involved. Even and especially then, you will respect the hazards. You don't have time to train as a firefighter or hazmat tech or confined space tech. So I am revoking any past training certifications with respect to all three, insofar as this Site is concerned.
"What you are authorized to do instead, if you decide it is necessary, is send undertrained or even unqualified Fire Brigade or Security contractors to die in your place."
Fuck me what.
"The SLE and I had this conversation at length before this interview began. He stated in no uncertain terms that we were all dead without you, that you had saved us all several times in ways that I did not need to know or even would want to think about, and that if he had been forced to choose between you dead in that hallway and _me_ dead in that hallway, he would have chosen to save _you_ - because he knows I have trained backups and he knows that despite all efforts, _YOU_ sir do NOT!
"So my challenge to you is this. Don't tell me, I don't need to know. But what would have happened to all of us, to the Site, if they had dragged out your dead body instead of Tom?"
Long pause.
That ... did not bear thinking about.
Not just one dead child. All of them.
Not just one dead firefighter. The entire Fire Brigade, sidewalked or interned as a suspected terrorist organization.
The Reaction Team. The stretcher bearers even. Criminal conspirators in unauthorized militias.
Plus what some wag had called the Homeland Friends and Family Plan.
I realized with a chill.
I'd had no right.
Not to authorize the entry, that was a minor fuckup. Besides they'd have gone anyway.
Risking myself, my own happy ass, that was what I had no right at all to do.
The moment I realized the child was in the hazmat chase I should have gone right back upstairs and let the Fire Brigade do the heroing. And if need be, the dying. Even if Janine as well as Tom had been killed as a result.
I wasn't _allowed_ to get killed.
"I see that you get it. Good. We will talk again, every morning, for a while, while we patch all this up. Meanwhile, go do your job. Find out if this was an accident or a murder."
I got up and walked out, started the process to do exactly that.
###
It had been negligent.
The door had been left locked but unlatched by a HVAC tech changing air filters. He felt really bad about it. This did not bring the child back. Or Tom.
All accesses to Site confined spaces now have an additional surface mounted padlock. A Facilities key _and_ a Security key are now required. This also fixed the latch issue. Changing filters is slightly less convenient but no one cares about that.
Child tracking procedures were revised. Her mother is seeing Dr. Rise to try to handle her grief and guilt.
The railing areas are now caged, in lieu of a second door. Belt and suspenders.
The hazmat needs of the Site were reevaluated, and two of the more hazardous lines taken out of service in certain buildings. The changes would not have saved Tom but were worth doing in their own right.
All Fire Brigade and Facilities staff were retrained in SCBA and IDLH procedures, by Janine, personally.
All Fire Brigade, Facilities staff and Security supervisors were trained in confined space procedures, by the VP of Facilities, personally. Except me. I sat through all the trainings and completed all the requirements, but was not issued a certification. My certificate of completion was stamped "Knowledge Skills Abilities Verified, Attendee Not Authorized To Enter Or Attend Confined Spaces At Site."
Tom was buried with honor near the top of Boot Hill.
The Fire Brigade had a private wake to grieve him. I was the only non firefighter to be invited to attend. Janine put an arm around my shoulder and made me stay for the whole time.
The Site tried to buy a lot more emergency equipment but couldn't because of the War. Gas sensors were backlogged because of the priority for chemical weapons sensors for our use of nerve gas in China.
I redoubled my efforts to train my backups. Arturo was most promising of a bad lot, but Sharon was catching up fast to him from a lower starting point.
I have been told by a sober Dr. Rise and a drunken Janine, that my efforts that day saved at least one life and possibly several. I'd bought that child the best possible chance of survival, the same chance Tom had knowingly risked his life for - and given it.
It will never feel that way to me.
If I'd had the balls, to lock it all down.
Instead I'd taken a swing at it.
